Experts: Extended therapy best treatment for offenders

Published 7:00 pm, Friday, February 22, 2008

They're neatly groomed. They hold a steady job. They're the neighbor who is always willing to provide that extra egg or stick of butter. And the ruse couldn't be more dangerous.

"We should fear these offenders not because they are monsters, but because they easily blend into the community," said Sgt. Sam Izzarelli, executive director of Connecticut's sex offender registry. "The majority of offenders - about 97 percent - have never been caught."

But the ones who are caught, how do you treat them?

How do you exorcise a monster and prevent future sex crimes?

Unlike a cast to fix a broken leg - a couple of months and you're good - there are no easy answers to treating sex offenders, according to the experts.

William Samek, Ph.D., who oversees a sex offender treatment program in Miami, has worked with sex offenders for 30 years. He's heard the nightmare narratives and watched years and years of group therapy eventually heal a man.

But Samek has also thrown people out of his group for poisoning the room with a bad attitude, poor attendance and a soul absent of remorse.

"You must understand, the label that we use to describe sex offenders applies toward a tremendous range of illnesses and different intensities of those illnesses," Samek said Friday.

"But the majority of sex offenders are in the shallow end of the pool," he added. "They're the ones who download kiddie porn. They're the 20-year-olds dating 16-year-olds.

"The deep end is a far different story," Samek said. "They're the people who kidnap strangers, rape them, murder them and mutilate them. They're way over one in a million in the general population. But that's the image you see in the media."

The shallow-end sex offenders are "very treatable," according to Samek's research.

Earlier in his career, Samek did a 13-year study of his patients and discovered a 1.86 percent rate of recidivism, barely recognizable on a statistics sheet.

"And the majority of those repeat offenders were cited for missing curfew or some other technical violation of their probation," Samek explained. "With sex offenders, the behavior isn't generally done because the people are evil or bad, although their behavior certainly is.

"It's most often done because of mental illness. It's done because they are sick and need professional help," Samek said. "And that takes time. One of my patients just finished up (last week) after 16 years."

Timothy Foley, Ph.D., a psychologist from suburban Philadelphia with 25 years of experience dealing with sex offenders, agrees with Samek's opinion.

"Sex offenders are a heterogeneous group of people with varying needs. One size doesn't fit all," Foley said Friday. "Some people are probably born with a penchant for deviant sexual preferences.

"You can almost think of it as a sexual orientation," he explained. "While some people are probably born heterosexual or homosexual, others could well be born with a sexual orientation toward (pre-pubescent) children.

"Do people choose to be that way?" he asked. "No, of course not. But at the same time, I think just because you have a certain orientation, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to act on it."

Although group therapy is probably the most common treatment for sex offenders, others in the medical community complement the regimen with drugs.

In laymen's terms, the treatment is often referred to as chemical castration. As with most drugs, Samek said, the testosterone-reducing benefits last only as long as the patient takes the medicine.

"There are people who have been medically treated, and they've re-offended," Samek said. "It's not a magic pill."